Okay, I'm real late to the party. I had to finish NWN 2 and sequels first.

Anyway, I have done some reading on companions and was figuring Alistar for the tank, Leliana for rogue and archer, Wynne for healing, etc. and myself as Combat Mage. Anyone use this combination and how did you find playing a mage as your PC?

Mage is good. I would lean toward Healing (don't 86 Destructive magic completely though) so you can get Morrigan. Leliana is almost a must unless the PC is a rogue. The Tank is interchangeable, but use Alistair at the beginning.

@ ElfBane - nice to see another person around my age that likes playing cRPGs.

@ Huwge - I started playing Drakensang and love the graphics and the party based play but I just couldn't get into the game mechanics, especially the wounding aspect and character building. I guess I am too use to the D&D way of the latter.

I played a mage about halfway through the game last January. Picked it back up again last month and finished with a rogue, now working on another mage.

Alistair is good for a tank, Leliana for ranged/chests/traps. I've been switching it up between Dog and Wynne/Morrigan for my last slot. Two mages is definitely nice, but I've also done fine with only my PC mage--have basic healing, but let Alistair lean on pots so I can disable/damage. Leliana and Dog don't usually draw enough aggro to get into much trouble.

You should definitely check out the community mods, some of them are very handy. Advanced Tactics gives more options for the Tactics menu (I'd even recommend using it 1st time through). Advanced Party is nice for subsequent playthroughs. It resets any character that joins your party to base stats, and allows you to use all of their stat, talent, and skill points yourself. I like being able to set up Morrigan and Wynne to have different spell sets in different games (gives more opportunity to try out different spell lines). In my current game, I changed Alistair to a 2-Hander instead of SnS to try those skills out. Does get annoying having to spec temporary members in the origin stories, Daveth and Jory (but at least you can give Daveth Lock-picking), and Tower of Ishal.

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"Many are my names in many countries. Mithrandir among the Elves, Tharkun to the Dwarves; Olorin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten, in the South Incanus, in the North Gandalf; to the East I go not"

Wow! Thanks Olorin for that link. You obviously have gamed quite a bit in the RPG Universe so I need to ask: Mods can cause gaming issues especially when you add too much. How many mods have you used at any given time?

Also, and anyone can answer here. My main concern at this point is not to mess up builds. For example, as I have mentioned earlier I want to build Leliana as a rogue/archer but it seems that there are pitfalls that need to be avoided for archery and that cunning is more important than dexterity, etc.

Am I over-analyzing or is there basics that I need to keep mindful of? Hope I was clear...

I don't use a huge number. The list I linked contains some that I wouldn't consider because they make the game too easy, others I'm just not interested in. I like the list most because it's a quick way to see a lot of mods and what they do without reading a bunch of threads or project descriptions (and it doesn't include projects that never got completed).

My current list is Adv. Tactics and Party, a chest for camp, Qwinn's fixpack, Dragon Age redesigned (changes the faces of a lot of NPCs and has some choices for companions) and Dragon Age Mutator--a compilation of small mods with an installer that lets you choose to enable each one separately--I got if to silence Shale's footsteps. It also includes many options that skew game balance (upping power of some spells), but also some utility things like no auto-leveling of companions, remove steal cooldown, and display items received (though I already had mods for these things, so didn't use the Mutator version). I tried out the more transparent and faster stealth, but uninstalled it because I thought it might be causes some crashes (though even the basic game suffers from a memory leak that sometimes does that).

I don't consider it a huge list of mods (not compared to some of the lists I ended up with for BG2).

Mods I'd recommend installing right away:
Adv. Tactics--helps give you the choice to micromanage less, but doesn't change the way tactics work, just gives you more options.

Qwinn's Fixpack--fixes some bugs in quests or dialogues to how they were intended to work. I consider it another patch.

Items received--personal preference, but I like to know what someone gave me for a quest reward or what I got from stealing without searching my inventory.

Stealing cooldown--if you're playing a klepto rogue, it's a must have. Waiting 10s in-between steals serves no purpose (since I'm anal enough to actually wait). Arguably, once you get to combat stealing, it could unbalance the game somewhat since you'll be able to steal from more enemy targets (since by that point your party should be able to drop more than one enemy per 10 s, but I consider it a minor problem. Just don't abuse combat stealing.).

Camp chest--I still remember on my first playthrough running back through long dungeons just because I didn't have room to pack out the last 10 items in chests. I should have just destroyed some of the cheaper loot, but having a chest in camp solves the inventory problems nicely.

The ones I would wait on for future playthroughs is Adv. Party (or no auto-level from Mutator). Might as well try out the builds that Bioware gave the companions before playing them custom.

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"Many are my names in many countries. Mithrandir among the Elves, Tharkun to the Dwarves; Olorin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten, in the South Incanus, in the North Gandalf; to the East I go not"

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"Many are my names in many countries. Mithrandir among the Elves, Tharkun to the Dwarves; Olorin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten, in the South Incanus, in the North Gandalf; to the East I go not"

I played a mage - and I would recommend frost for the shear insanity of watching Alistair or Sten destroying people into little chunks of meaty ice.

on a sidenote - after a pause from playing I had to upgrade to 1.04 and by gods the game would suddenly not approve my DLC's so after spending 3 hours trying to get it fixed I finally gave up - I am not even gonna play the new DA2 - I just cannot be bothered when I have to use that much time trying to start playing.

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"Between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Arius. There was an age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world. Hither came Conan, the cimmarian, sword in hand. It is I, his chronicler who knows well his saga. Now let me tell you of the days of high adventure!"

"Unleash the Casey!"

"Make no mistake, should you choose to test my resolve in this matter, you will be looking at an outcome that will have a finality, that is beyound your comprehension. And you will not counting the days or the months or the years, but milleniums in a place with no doors!"